Romanian female soldiers stand prior to the military parade on Romania's National Day in Bucharest, on December 1, 2022. (Photo by Daniel Mihailescu/AFP Photo)

Children run next to a paraglider wearing Santa Claus costume landing to deliver gifts to refugee children from Karabakh region, near the village of Akunk, outside Yerevan, on December 26, 2023, as part of “ParaSanta”, an event organised by the Armenian Paragliding Club. (Photo by Karen Minasyan/AFP Photo)

Nick Uhlig and Philipp Oettel race alongside Lukas Erlecke and Leon Freygang during the opening round of the German sidecar championship at the 58th ADAC Motocross in Schopfheim, Deutschland on June 1, 2025. (Photo by Grant Hubbs/IMAGO via Avalon)

Bujang, a 35-year-old male orangutan rescued from a circus in Sumatra, washes his face on a sanctuary island surrounded by a river where non-releasable orangutans are protected for life at the Samboja Lestari Orangutan Rehabilitation Center run by the non-profit Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation in Samboja, East Kalimantan, on July 12, 2024. (Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP Photo)

It is already one of the world’s most iconic cities, but this incredible collection shows how much Paris has changed over the course of the past century. The collection, by French photographer Julien Knez, shows Paris in the 1940s against a backdrop of how the same places look today. Knez says he put the striking collection together to celebrate the 71st anniversary of the city’s liberation from Nazi control in August 1944. Here: Soldiers outside the Hotel De Ville in the 1940s. (Photo by Julien Knez/Caters News)

Elaine Vandiver shares a moment with a two-year old alpaca as they touch noses as she washes him at her farm at 1560 Stateline Road Monday, May 11, 2015, in Walla Walla, Wash. (Photo by Michael Lopez/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin via AP Photo)

A young Thai man jumps in the air and cheers as his rocket takes off at the Bun Bang Fai Rocket Festival on May 10, 2015 in Yasothon, Thailand. During the Bun Bang Fai rocket festival, Thai residents launch enormous home-made rockets into the air to gain Buddhist merit and to celebrate the beginning of the rainy season. (Photo by Taylor Weidman/Getty Images)

Photographer Howard Schatz had an idea: place actors in a series of roles and dramatic situations to reveal the essence of their characters. Such was the premise behind his book, In Character: Actors Acting, which captures some of Hollywood’s most emotive stars in the act of, well, making faces. Luckily for us, he continued the tradition for Vanity Fair. Here are some of the best.